Milwaukee paper reports on the unpleasant two-year litigation that resulted after two employees of Liturgical Publications Inc., the country’s largest publisher of church bulletins and newsletters, departed to form a start-up competitor. The case ended with a jury’s rejection of allegations that the former employees stole trade secrets; a judge had earlier ruled a noncompete agreement unenforceable (David Doege, “Bulletin publisher leaves fold, beats lawsuit”, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, Nov. 11; Lisa Sink, “Most bulletin publisher’s claims against ex-workers dismissed”, Dec. 30, 2002) (via Employer’s Lawyer (Nov. 11), which says the story provides “a good picture of what I call the soft dollar cost of litigation”)
Archive for November, 2003
Privileged, confidential…and in the dumpster
What’s that in the dumpster at the University Park Plaza in Fort Myers, Fla., available for curious strangers to pick through? Why, it’s thousands of personal, confidential client files, abandoned after the Florida law firm of Annis, Mitchell, Cockey, Edwards, and Roehn went bankrupt and closed its local office. (“Attorneys abandon old client files”, MSNBC, Oct. 30)(via Carolyn Elefant)
Dr. Phil Sued
A scheduled guest on the Dr. Phil show had a panic attack before she was set to appear. (The guest, former Playboy Club waitress “Bambi” Bembenek, was going to proclaim her innocence of murder charges to which she had previously pled no contest.) So she decided to tie bedsheets together to escape the second-floor apartment where she was staying. And she fell, and broke her leg. Which was amputated as a result. If you’ve been reading this website any length of time, you know what happened next. (“Ex-cop blames ‘Dr. Phil’ show for injuries that led to amputation”, AP, Nov. 11; press release; see also Jessica McBride, “Bembenek judge calls case a ‘circus'”, Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel, Oct. 24; “Bembenek Hurts Foot Trying To Escape Hotel Room”, Channel4000.com, Nov. 17, 2002). (via SoCalLawBlog)
Silica lawsuits: castles from sand
Mississippi is far outpacing the rest of the country in silica litigation (see Sept. 13): “More than 17,000 plaintiffs in this state have sued U.S. Silica, a leading producer of silica sand, for allegedly causing them to develop an incurable lung disease.” One lawsuit filed at the courthouse in Macon, Miss. “was filed by 4,200 plaintiffs, close to double the 2,461 residents in this Noxubee County town.” Less than one percent of the plaintiffs are actually from Mississippi, the others having been brought there by their lawyers to sue. Critics say law firms are using mass solicitation and screening techniques to recruit thousands of claimants with no actual disability, as was done earlier with asbestos. One silica plaintiff, “62-year-old Noah Myers Bufkin of Lucedale, said he was diagnosed in a mass screening as having silicosis, although he can’t say for sure he has any symptoms. …The same screening company diagnosed him as having asbestosis seven or eight years ago, he said. He estimates he has received about $10,000 from that suit. …. He doesn’t know of any symptoms he’s suffering from silicosis or asbestosis. ‘I’m saving up in case I do have a problem,’ he said. ‘For a poor fella like me, every little bit helps.'” (Jerry Mitchell, “Silica suits latest to hit Miss. courts”, Jackson Clarion-Ledger, Oct. 19).
Suing incompetent peacekeepers
Blessed are those who just don’t get involved in the first place dept.: “Relatives of victims of Europe’s bloodiest post-war massacre are to sue the United Nations and the Dutch government for ?370 million.” Since no adequate recovery is to be had from Bosnian Serb war criminals for the Srebrenica massacre, reparations lawyers now wish to extract money from the well-meaning neutrals and noncombatants whose bungling efforts failed to prevent it. That should provide a good incentive for anyone to volunteer as peacekeepers in future, no? U.S. lawyers are said to be involved. (“Srebrenica relatives sue UN and Dutch for ?370m”, Daily Telegraph, Nov. 10).
Failure of urban school-finance litigation
For two decades and more, civil rights groups have been filing lawsuits claiming that the supposed underfunding of urban schools is unconstitutional. How successful have these suits been, even on their own terms? “In one of the most notable such cases, decided in 1984, a federal judge in Missouri ordered a doubling of Kansas City’s property tax, an income tax surcharge and extra state contributions to finance $2 billion in spending on Kansas City’s schools. What followed was a decade of lavish excess — new schools boasting television and animation studios, a planetarium, a model United Nations with simultaneous translation capability, even a zoo, a Cato Institute study found. By 1991 Kansas City was shelling out $9,412 per student, compared with $2,854 to $5,956 in the suburbs. Despite this flood of dollars, white enrollment dropped from 27% to 20%, and the test scores of black students in Kansas City didn’t improve.
“State courts have gotten into the act, too. So far, courts in 19 states have found violations of state constitutions in the way schools are funded, according to the Education Commission of the States. Some of these rulings are pretty creative. In June New York’s highest court ruled that the state is violating a constitutional requirement to provide ‘a system of free common schools’ to New York City students, despite the fact that $10,795 per student was spent in the city’s schools in 2000-01. That was slightly lower than the New York state average of $10,922, but greater than the average spent in any other state.
“Rather than wait for independent plaintiffs, school districts themselves now sometimes bring these suits as a revenue grab.” (Ira Carnahan, “Desegregation’s Broken Promises”, Forbes, Nov. 10) See Paul Ciotti, “Money And School Performance: Lessons from the Kansas City Desegregation Experiment”, Cato Policy Analysis, Mar. 16, 1998.
The judges’ friend and the $225,000 swivel chair
Well-reported New York Times piece on local attorney Ravi Batra, who “for much of the past decade … has been a particularly potent force in the clubby corridors of New York City courthouses. He played a role in picking State Supreme Court judges. Lawyers seeking an edge in the unfamiliar world of Brooklyn courts hired him as their guide. Judges who controlled court appointments — where lawyers typically manage the assets and welfare of the elderly, the young or of troubled companies — gave him 150 of these, worth more than $500,000 in fees.” In one case, involving “a wealthy 94-year-old woman with Alzheimer’s disease”, Batra nicked the woman’s estate for $84,753 in fees: “The investigators noted that he charged $100 for each of 80 short phone calls and never listed their subject matter.”
Keep reading and clicking through the fourth and last page of the story to reach what may be the most piquant Batra exploit of all, his lawsuit against the hapless owners of a Brooklyn furniture store after he fell out of a swivel chair they sold him. “He said the fall had left him with herniated disks, loss of height, worn-down teeth, heart damage and frustration and anger that ‘leaks out in certain relationships,’ according to court papers.” He wanted $80 million, not only for pain and suffering “but also for a patio bar and a game room with table-tennis and air-hockey tables ‘to permit activity without injury or waste of travel time,’ the papers said.” Eventually he settled for $225,000 on the claim. But lawyers for the furniture store weren’t told at the time that Batra was friendly with Manhattan judge Diane Lebedeff, who heard the case and who issued a number of rulings in Batra’s favor: for example, she gave him several court appointments, including the lucrative case of the woman with Alzheimer’s. Both Batra and Judge Lebedeff deny improper influence (Kevin Flynn & Andy Newman, “Friend of the Court: Cozying Up to Judges, and Reaping Opportunity”, New York Times, Nov. 11). More: for Batra’s side of the story, see the comments section on Legal Reader’s Nov. 11, 2003 post. Update Nov. 15, 2004: Batra sues TV’s popular “Law and Order” saying it defamed him by portraying him as a crooked attorney in a fictionalized but recognizable episode; Apr. 15, 2005: Judge Lebedeff censured.
ADA v. stadium seating, cont’d
Whoops! It turns out the design of many modern American movie theaters may be illegal, after all. In a big victory for disabled-rights advocates, backed by the U.S. Department of Justice, a Sixth Circuit panel has ruled that under the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) Cinemark Theaters cannot argue that it is enough to offer wheelchair-using patrons unobstructed views of the screen in its stadium-style theaters; instead they must be offered “comparable”, i.e. comparably desirable views. (opinion, Nov. 6). For our earlier coverage of this controversy, see Apr. 25-26, 2000; Sept. 5, 2002; Jan. 30, 2003. Update Aug. 1, 2004: Supreme Court declines to resolve issue.
FBI probing top Hollywood lawyers
Law enforcement officials think they know why prominent private investigator Anthony Pellicano was so good at turning up dirt about targets of his investigations: they say he used illegal wiretaps. A lot of highly placed Hollywood lawyers purchased Pellicano’s investigative services, and now the FBI is asking: how much did they know about his methods? A grand jury in Los Angeles has been hearing testimony from witnesses. “‘There are many, many nervous people in town,’ said one white-collar defense lawyer familiar with parties involved in the investigation.” Yet another example of why our legal profession is so hard to cast in the role of tribunes of the right to privacy (Henry Weinstein, Greg Krikorian and James Bates, “FBI Probe Shakes Up Hollywood’s Top Lawyers”, Los Angeles Times, Nov. 8)(via TalkLeft). Plus: New York Times has more (Bernard Weinraub, “Talk of Wiretaps Rattles Hollywood”, Nov. 11) as do the New York Post (Nov. 12) and AP (Nov. 12). Update Feb. 7, 2006: Pellicano pleads not guilty in 110-count indictment.
In Seattle, serious sanctions
“An unprecedented $400,000 fine against one of Seattle’s largest law firms is shaking the legal community, prompting some lawyers to predict that local litigation may never be the same. … In an opinion circulating throughout the city’s law offices, a King County Superior Court judge found that the Dorsey & Whitney law firm had no good reason for filing eight of the 18 claims in a wealthy client’s prolonged, high-stakes business dispute. … In her opinion, King County Superior Court Judge Suzanne Barnett wrote that lawyers sometimes need to say no to deep-pocketed clients even if it’s ‘bad for business.'” Fans of the ruling hope it will discourage shotgun litigation in which lawyers aim as many likely and unlikely claims as they can assemble in hopes something will hit the target, while critics complain that the prospect of sanctions will discourage attorneys from being appropriately “zealous” on behalf of their clients (on which argument see Jul. 17). (Kathy George, “Law firm fined for ‘piling on’ claims”, Seattle Post-Intelligencer, Nov. 10)